Sunday Talk: Rahm Emanuel, Karl Rove & More (Video)

07.15.12 7:24 PM ET

Rahm to Romney: ‘Stop Whining’

They’ve released the Rahm. The Chicago mayor appeared on This Week, going for Mitt Romney’s jugular and not letting host George Stephanopoulos get a word in edge-wise. “Stop whining,” Rahm scolded the Republican candidate. “If you want to claim Bain Capital as your calling card to the White House, then defend what happened to Bain Capital.” Romney is claiming that he was not in charge of Bain’s policies after 1999—when the firm took over companies that shipped jobs overseas—despite SEC filings that list him as CEO during that time. “As president of the United States, you can’t put a sign on your desk that says ‘Gone Fishin’,” Rahm added.

Ed Gillespie: Romney 'Retired Retroactively' From Bain

Mitt Romney’s senior adviser, Ed Gillespie, feels bad for the Obama campaign. Well, kind of. On State of the Union, Gillespie said that it’s “sad to see” what the Obama campaign has been “reduced to,” citing the president’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s, um, let’s say ‘confusing’ timeline at Bain. “We now know that this president will say or do anything to keep the highest office in the land even if it means demeaning the highest office in the land,” Gillespie said. Besides, Gillespie said, Romney 'retired retroactively' from Bain once he was done working on the Olympics.

Terry Branstad: Obama ‘Most Divisive President’

Forget James Buchanan, the pre-Lincoln president who presided over America’s descent into civil war—according to Iowa governor Terry Branstad, Barack Obama is “the most divisive president” in U.S. history. “He campaigned as somebody who’s going to unite people,” Branstad said on Fox News Sunday, but now, Branstad continued, the president hasn’t lived up to his promises. “There’s a lot of independents that voted for him last time that really feel betrayed.”

Paul Ryan: Obama ‘Dividing’ and ‘Distracting’ the Country

“This is not the candidate of hope and change,” Paul Ryan said of Obama on Face the Nation Sunday. “This is a candidate who is hoping to change the subject by attacking his opponent.” A frontrunner for Romney’s VP pick, Ryan raised the stakes of the election to astronomical proportions. “I really gotta tell you, Bob,” he told host Bob Schieffer, “the next few years are going to make it or break it for America. We are going to determine…what kind of people we’re going to be, what kind of country we’re going to have…” No pressure, America.

Karl Rove’s Fuzzy Math

Karl Rove tried to harness his inner Tim Russert on Fox News Sunday, but fell a little flat. Picking up his whiteboard for a preplanned explanation of why Obama’s attack ads aren’t working, Rove explains that, in mid-May, each candidate had support from 45 percent of voters. Awkwardly, though, his whiteboard had Romney at…46 percent, still tied with Obama. Hopefully Rove isn’t the one handling all the money at his super PAC, American Crossroads.

Sarah Lacy on Newsweek’s ‘Fear-Mongering’ Cover

C’mon, Howie! On his CNN program Reliable Sources, Newsweek and Daily Beast Washington bureau chief Howard Kurtz questioned the validity of Newsweek’s cover story, “iCrazy: Is the Onslaught of Technology Making Us Crazy?”. “I found [the story] a little far-fetched,” he said. Veteran technology reporter Sarah Lacy ratcheted the critique up a notch: “This is the same sort of fear-mongering hysteria that wanted people to believe that video games made kids go shoot up their schools,” she said. Yikes. A response, Tony?

Bob Costas: Freeh Report Did ‘Irreperable Damage’ to JoePa

“If they play football come September at Penn State, something’s wrong,” Bob Costas said on Meet the Press Sunday. The man whose interview with Jerry Sandusky cemented (for many people) the Penn State coach’s guilt weighed in on the fallout of the Freeh Report, which found that Paterno had known about Sandusky’s crimes as early as 1998, but failed to speak out against his assistant coach. The report does “irreparable damage to Joe Paterno’s legacy,” Costas said. “It does not invalidate [the good things Paterno did outside of football], but it might overwhelm them.”